Effects of Situational Factors on Metaphor Detection in an Online Discussion Forum

Accurate metaphor detection remains an open challenge. In this paper, we explore a new type of clue for disambiguating terms that may be used metaphorically or literally in an online medical support community. In particular, we investigate the influence of situational factors on propensity to employ the metaphorical sense of words when they can be used to illustrate the emotion behind the experience of the event. Specifically we consider the experience of stressful illness-related events in a poster’s recent history as situational factors. We evaluate the positive impact of automatically extracted cancer events on a metaphor detection task using data from an online cancer forum. We also provide a discussion of specific associations between events and metaphors, such as journey with diagnosis or warrior with chemotherapy.